


Cute Boys With Short Haircuts

by QueerCosette



Series: A Miraculous Musical [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Finds Out First, Adrienette with MariChat form, Angst, Crying, F/M, Heartbreak, Hurt Marinette Dupain-Cheng, I couldn't help myself and there's a Les Mis joke in here, I mean you're really telling me none of them make Les Mis jokes? Victor Hugo is peak French culture, Marinette Is An Amazing Singer, Misunderstandings, Musicals, Mutual Pining, So Much Self-Projection, one-sided identity reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19007056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueerCosette/pseuds/QueerCosette
Summary: Marinette sees Adrien and Kagami kissing and jumps to conclusions. Hurt and upset, she heads up to her balcony to do the one thing that cheers her up: singing a really angsty song.Adrien had nothing to do with the kiss. He just wants to ask Marinette out. He passes her balcony as Chat Noir and hears the most beautiful singing voice... but the song is so sad. And then he sticks around just a little too long, and catches sight of something he shouldn't have...





	Cute Boys With Short Haircuts

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to dedicate this to my best friend Bek, who sang this song in our Singing Skills class and made both of us cry.
> 
> The song in question is Cute Boys With Short Haircuts from the musical Vanities.

She’s cold. She can’t remember how long she’s been sitting on the balcony, or when her sobs faded to silent tears streaming down her face. She can’t remember the world being unblurred by tears, or if her parents noticed her arrive home at all – she took the back entrance, avoiding passing the windows of the bakery – but she can’t really remember doing that. It’s all sort of a fuzzy reality; it happened only because it makes sense, not because she remembers it happening.

The only thing Marinette can remember is seeing Kagami’s lips pressed firmly to Adrien’s, with his hands on her shoulders, holding her in place.

It’s only because it was Kagami that she knows it’s not a misunderstanding. If it had been Chloé (which was increasingly unlikely, Marinette’s seen the way she looks at Sabrina recently) or Lila (God forbid) it would almost definitely be a sneak attack that Adrien was trying to most likely escape. But no, Marinette knows he likes Kagami – as a person, as a friend, and as a potential girlfriend. And this just confirmed it.

Tikki’s inside; Marinette had begged her to leave her alone for a little while, just to process it. She’s not doing a very good job of it, though. It just… hurts. So much. She’s never felt this way about anyone before – sure, there have been crushes, but none that lasted, and never on anyone as kind and sweet as Adrien. He’s been a good friend to her for so long; she can’t lose that. But she doesn’t think she can face him for a while.

She can’t face Chat Noir either, she thinks. Is this what it felt like for him, every time she pushed him away or mentioned the ‘other boy’ in her life? Did it feel like his heart had been chewed up and spat out, stepped on and called names, thrown down a sewer and then laughed at? Maybe she’ll ask him how he manages to keep up his put-together façade around her, knowing he’s missed his chance with her. But not now.

Only one thing can cheer Marinette up when she’s this down. She loves to sing karaoke of songs that fit her situation – there’s no better feeling than belting your emotions away, and she has a good voice. Even on days when she can’t draw a single straight line, and she’s tripped on every surface conceivable, and mixed her words up at the wrong moment, she knows that the one talent that will only take medical leave and nothing else is her ability to sing a song pretty damn well.

Marinette feels for her phone next to her with numb fingers, manages to grab it, and gets to her feet for the first time in who knows how long, heading over to the table under the umbrella where she’d left her portable speaker that morning. It’s pink and cheery and shaped like a unicorn’s head – a gift from her cousin, María, before she left Paris to go to the UK to study Musical Theatre. _María would know what to do in this situation,_ Marinette thinks mournfully, but then a second thought occurs to her. _Maybe not. She’s as gay as a revolutionary in 1832._ The thought makes her chuckle involuntarily, her laugh coming out tired and hoarse.

She clears her throat, making sure she’s not too choked up, and unlocks her phone, plugging it into the speaker. She browses through her saved karaoke tracks on YouTube until she finds the perfect song, with a title that makes her give a second, slightly less hoarse chuckle. Marinette presses play on the track, and as the intro plays, turns to face the skyline.

“Seems like one of those ‘Where did I go wrong?’ days,” she begins. Her voice is husky from crying, but still sounds good. “‘Can't stop crying’ and ‘I guess I'm not so strong’ days… Lost the only guy I ever had.”

Well, she never really _had_ Adrien, but the sentiment still stands. She continues, “It's been one of those "seems-like-I've-been-scarred" years. ‘Can't get out of bed’ and ‘life is kinda hard years’… No one ever made me feel so sad.”

It’s true; no one’s ever made her feel so many emotions as sweet, kind Adrien has since she met him. She approaches the edge of the rooftop and leans on the railing, gazing down at the bustling Parisian street, and her attention is caught by a cropped blond haircut on a boy rushing past. Her heart leaps into her throat, but it’s not him – this boy’s profile is too sharp, and Marinette’s heart pinches at the irony as the chorus begins.

“Now all I see are cute boys with short haircuts, walking by in a blur – and all I see is him and me the way we always were… That's how it goes when cute boys with short haircuts set your senses astir! He says he's true, then ditches you for her.”

 

* * *

 

Adrien rushes out of the school as fast as he can. He’s embarrassed, he’s freaking, he’s reeling from shock, and he’s getting out of Kagami’s reach before she recovers from her own shock and remembers that she can use a sword. As soon as he’s in the alley next to the school, he transforms, and Plagg has no complaints. He may be lazy, and only care about cheese most of the time, but Adrien’s one of the best Chat Noirs he’s ever had, and if Adrien gets run through with a sword that means a) no more expensive cheese and b) no more Adrien. It also risks exposing Adrien’s identity to Hawkmoth (Chat Noir stops showing up pretty much the second world-renowned model Adrien Agreste gets murdered? Pretty fishy), so there’s a second motivation.

Chat Noir decides to hide out on top of the Eiffel Tower for a while, just thinking about what happened. Kagami had said something last week to him about going for what he wanted when he brought up his love life again, which was when this mess had started, he supposed. He’d taken this cryptic advice into consideration, weighed up all the options, and come to the conclusion that if Ladybug really wasn’t interested, he should perhaps turn his attention to the other girl who had begun to capture his interest recently: Marinette Dupain-Cheng; baker, designer, class representative, and Everyday Ladybug Extraordinaire. Marinette was everything Ladybug was – kind, sweet, brave, an excellent problem solver, generous, and always willing to lend a helping hand, plus there was the added bonus of knowing each other’s identities. Not to mention, she was funny, multi-talented, and laughed at his puns.

Adrien had made a decision to go for what he wanted, and what he wanted was to ask Marinette out for coffee and see if she maybe wanted to go see a movie with him some time. He was sure Kagami would bring the suggestion up again at fencing practise, and decided to run the idea by her – and also thank her for helping him realise what he wanted. But the conversation had not gone quite as he’d imagined.

Kagami did indeed ask him if he’d decided to follow her advice, and he’d confirmed that he had. He was opening his mouth to explain his idea, and thank her for putting it in his head, when she’d interrupted him.

“I _always_ go for what I want, Adrien,” she’d said, blunt as ever. Why had that sounded so much like a threat? He’d found out a second later, when she’d aggressively grabbed him by the cheeks, pulled him towards her, and jammed her lips against his own.

His first thought was that Kagami kissed like she fenced: unyielding and likely to leave a bruise tomorrow. His second thought was _Hey, I should prise her off and tell her I’m not interested,_ and he put his hands on her shoulders, ready to gently but firmly push her away. _Was that the door slamming?_

The conversation afterwards had been short, to the point, and probably babbled a little. He’d run away as soon as he felt he’d given a decent apology. And now he was here.

Oh god. What if she got Akumatized over this? Oni-Chan had been a nightmare the first time around… But no, there had been a suspicious lack of Hawk-tivity lately (Ladybug and Marinette had both laughed at that one, although Ladybug had groaned too – and it was definitely a ‘I’ve heard that one before’ groan and not a ‘that was terrible, Chaton, please put some effort into this’ groan. What? There’s a difference!). A crying shame, since Gabriel was at a conference in New York at the moment, and had taken both Nathalie and the Gorilla with him, leaving Adrien free to come and go as he pleased. The one time he didn’t need any excuses, and there wasn’t an Akuma in sight…

But back to the matter at hand. Maybe it was time to speed up his ask-Marinette-on-a-date plan, before Kagami ran him through with a fencing foil. Kagami was probably far away from College Françoise-Dupont by now. He could swing by the bakery as Adrien… casually ask if Marinette was in and if he could talk to her…

Hopefully be on a date with her this time tomorrow. That sounded like a plan, and so, with a lovesick grin stretched across his face, Chat Noir took off in the direction of the best bakery in Paris.

He was intending to drop down into the alley he’d used earlier, detransform, and walk around from there, but something stopped him: the sound of someone singing on a rooftop, an angelic soprano voice, the tune sad and sweet but the words indecipherable. A second later, he caught sight of Marinette on her balcony, leaning against the railing with an uncharacteristically melancholy expression on that sweet face, drying tear tracks still visible on her cheeks. It takes all of Chat’s willpower not to rush over, pull her into a tight hug, and demand to know who made her cry, but then she opens her mouth and continues singing, and he’s so absolutely gobsmacked at how lovely her voice is, he almost misses the lyrics. When he processes them, he’s once again filled with rage at the thought of someone hurting Marinette, because the words sound so exhausted and defeated, and unnatural coming from her.

“When you find a man you don't wanna share him,” she sings, “but there's someone always thinking she can snare him – laying out the perfect little trap. You can play it safe, sure; you got a smart plan – soon it's just another ‘love-can-fall-apart’ plan. Guess sometimes we all could use a map to steer us through the cute boys with short haircuts, in a maze of their own. And here I am, a little lamb – I'm so lost and all alone, outnumbered by the cute boys with short haircuts sitting high on some throne! I'm here below, unseen and so unknown…”

The lyrics are sad enough, but Marinette’s voice is filled with misery and longing, and although the thought of her loving someone else makes Chat’s stomach flip unpleasantly, he desperately wants to know who hurt her, so he can personally throttle them. The tune changes as she reaches the end of the chorus, and he’s blown away by how her voice builds, slowly filling with anger to accompany her pain.

“There was a time when everyone would notice me, before whatever strength I had was gone.” Marinette really was the girl everyone noticed for ages – but since Lila and Kagami had arrived, she’s been pushed to one side more and more often – he’s as guilty of it as the rest of their friends, he knows it, but he’ll stop at nothing to let her know that he’s realised how dumb that was of him, and to apologise for not putting her feelings first.

“I'd die for things to be the way they used to be, but nothing stops the world from moving on!” She belts the line out – it’s loud and controlled and full of emotion, and suddenly he’s struck by how much he doesn’t know about Marinette. Who taught her to sing like that? He didn’t even know she could sing at all. He… really knows less about her than he’d thought.

She’s moving onto the final chorus now, and he listens attentively to the lyrics, unable to pay attention to anything else. “And nothing stops the cute boys with short haircuts who surround me each day! I'm not so grand, or in demand, or ‘pretty’ like they say!”

Wrong. Marinette is _so_ pretty. She’s possibly one of the most beautiful girls he’s ever seen – and he’s literally a model who spends a ton of his free time surrounded by other models. Marinette is only tied with Ladybug, as far as beautiful girls go, and might even beat Ladybug – the freckles across the bridge of her nose are adorable, and her cheeks are always a gorgeous rosy pink, while Ladybug’s face is mostly hidden by her mask.

“Not pretty like the cute boys with short haircuts, with the games that they play!”

So it’s a pretty boy who has hurt her – a handsome boy who has played games with her heart. Chat itches to Cataclysm this asshole, but reminds himself that murder is illegal, even if it’s technically deserved.

“The games of all the cute boys with broad shoulders, loving all they survey – and loving being cute boys with low voices, and low morals, and no interest!”

Marinette’s voice rises in volume with the high note, as does the pain and the loneliness in her tone, and she pauses, breathing heavily and rubbing at her eyes, as if trying to stop tears from pouring out. Chat makes no such move to stop the tears he knows are starting to trickle down his mask; he’s crying on Marinette’s behalf, and on his own. _Someone hurt the most incredible girl in the world,_ he thinks, _and he doesn’t even care._

Marinette starts singing again, softer now, and he has to strain to hear her. The sadness is still present, but now her voice is tinged with a sort of weary emptiness, and he wonders how long she’s been hurting for that she’s grown this tired of it.

“Cute boys with short haircuts never looking my way,” she sings, sniffling a little. “So here I sit and that's how it will stay… thanks to shattered trust…” she pauses, hiccups, and continues, “and some slight disgust. No more cute boys with short haircuts –and I guess that's just –” her voice cracks, but she takes a deep breath, and sings the final note – “okay.”

Chat can barely breath. He’s desperately drinking in the sight of her face, willing her to please cheer up because he can’t bare to see her sad, when suddenly something makes him choke for real. A tiny red sprite-like thing zooms up through the floorboards and lands on Marinette’s shoulder, cuddling against her cheek. His ears only just pick up the sweet yet worried tones of the thing’s voice, the words a mumbled mystery, and Marinette nods, turning away from the balcony.

Chat doesn’t even notice her grab her phone and head through the trapdoor to her room. He just gets to his feet and blindly makes his way back home. He drops his transformation the second his feet hit his bedroom floor, and just stands in shock. Plagg opens his mouth, then closes it again. He doesn’t know what to say. Adrien offers him a pathetic attempt at a smile, before sinking down to sit on his bed, and Plagg curls into a loaf on the pillow, watching, but for once not judging.

That thing – the thing on Marinette’s shoulder – it was a Kwami. And not just any Kwami.

 _Ladybug’s_ Kwami.

Marinette is Ladybug.

 _Marinette_ is _Ladybug._

On any other occasion, he’d be leaping for joy, ecstatic that the two girls he’s fallen for are one and the same. As it is, however, he’s hurting too much on their – no, _her_ behalf. Ladybug always pushed him away for someone else. And now that someone else has hurt her, and played games with her heart, and made her feel unpretty, and ultimately left her for someone else.

That _bastard_ doesn’t deserve her. And Adrien will stop at nothing to make sure he gets what’s coming to him – but those plans can wait.

His immediate mission is to make sure that Marinette knows she’s loved, and that she’s worth more than what this prick has made her feel, and most importantly help her smile again, and lose that sadness in her voice.

 _(And maybe,_ he thinks to himself, _if there’s time, listen to her sing some more. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of her voice.)_

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably add more to this later, but for now, enjoy it as an angsty one-shot.
> 
> Also I actually own Marinette's unicorn speaker. It doesn't work anymore but it's really cute.
> 
> Guess who María is based off? ;D ...The irony is, I am self-projecting onto Marinette like crazy.
> 
> EDIT/UPDATE  
> So this story is now officially the prologue of my upcoming series 'A Miraculous Musical'. Warning ahead of time: It will be VERY VERY VERY ANGSTY. I hope you will read it!!


End file.
